1. Technical Field
The invention relates to an image selecting device, an image selecting method, an image pickup apparatus, and a program that set, based on a face image included in a plurality of images, an album in which images showing a person of the face image are collected.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is a technique of extracting a face image of a person included in an image captured by a digital camera or the like. Documents described below have proposed various techniques using the extracted face image.
JP 2005-267146 A describes using a group photograph as an index; when a subject is selected from the group photograph, searching an existing memory for an image corresponding to the subject; and automatically creating an e-mail based on a mail address associated with the found subject image.
JP 2005-202660 A describes a search system that reads a predetermined person's face from a group photograph, reads out personal information corresponding to face data from a recording portion, and displaying the personal information. The group photograph is used as a search key for the personal information.
JP 2005-303754 A describes extracting images in order from the top of an image group that is determined as including a person image and registering the extracted images as reference images. All images including the same person are extracted from the image group, using face images included in the reference images as a key. Then, the images are stored in folders for respective persons.
JP 2005-174308 A (corresponding to US 2005/0105806 A and US 2005/0147302 A) describe cutting out face images from an image, displaying the face images in a list form as non-classified person-indefinite images. In this case, the images are arranged in descending order of similarity between the face images and a predetermined person image, and the face images are associated with the existing persons by a drag and drop operation of a user, respectively.
JP 2006-92026 A describes: extracting face images from images showing persons, and classifying the face images for each person. Then, the best shot is selected for each person. JP 2006-92026 A describes two kinds of methods as a determination method, that is, a) allowing a user to select one face image from a face image list of the same person, and b) detecting an eye area and selecting one face image where the eyes are not closed.
When a photographer takes a large number of photographs at an event or the like where many people gather and then sends an image to each person of a photographic subject or sends a printed-out photograph to each person, classification or selection of the images is a very troublesome work. In this case, there has been a demand to automatically classify the images into groups suitable for the respective persons and to reduce burden necessary for that work.
JP 2005-267146 A relates to searching for a mail address, but does not describe a method of automatically classifying images into groups suitable for respective persons.
JP 2005-202660 A relates to specifying persons in a face image, but does not describe a method of automatically classifying images into groups suitable for respective persons. Also, it is less necessary for JP 2005-202660 A to use the group photograph as a search key for personal information.
Since JP 2005-303754A uses images as reference images from the top, even if the first image is poorly taken, the first image is set as the reference image. Therefore, it is likely that an erroneous detection is made in searching for the same person image. When plural persons are included in one image, one image is redundantly stored in respective personal folders, which unnecessarily wastes a system resource.
Since JP 2005-174308 A requires a user to classify images by himself (herself), it may be troublesome to classify the images when handling a large number of images.
JP 2006-92026 A relates to selecting a face image of each person and generating a “segmented” template. Also, when the method of allowing the user to select one face image from the face image list of the same person is employed, it may be troublesome to select the face image in handling a large number of images.